Seems to be quite the polarizing album (although the majority of the reviews are positive, I've heard many people say it sucks). Personally I like it. I realized it's significantly watered down and light. The difference between them and a band like Fallcoh (seriously, worst thing ever) is that Coldworld actually still have good melodies and a convincing atmosphere - well, to my ears anyway.

Regarding the ever so popular argument that "just because you don't like it doesn't mean it sucks", you can use it both ways. I'd say, in fact, that the argument becomes considerably more plausible in the form of "just because you like it doesn't mean it's any good".

It's an idiotic pseudo-argument that doesn't make any point whatsoever other than that whoever says it clearly can't handle his favourite albums being critiqued or ridiculed.

^ I agree. When I first read Nightgaunt's review of Anthems to the Welkin At Dusk, it was a new experience for me. I'd never read a review which was the opposite of my own opinion but which was so well established that in the end I sympathized. While it didn't change my opinion of the album itself, exactly, it did change the label under which I view the work, and I'll certainly never look at black metal the same after reading it. A severe and intelligent review.

Regarding the ever so popular argument that "just because you don't like it doesn't mean it sucks", you can use it both ways. I'd say, in fact, that the argument becomes considerably more plausible in the form of "just because you like it doesn't mean it's any good".

It's an idiotic pseudo-argument that doesn't make any point whatsoever other than that whoever says it clearly can't handle his favourite albums being critiqued or ridiculed.

That's not true. The problem is that so many people just murder the constructivity and basically any sense whatsoever of their criticism because of expressing it in a completely primitive way. I don't mind criticism, but when someone says "this is shit and the band are dicks", I won't reconsider the meaning of my life and the quality of music I enjoy, I'll simply think that guy is a moron.

I can take my favourite stuff being criticised (if I couldn't I'd be completely fucked as I have a problematic tendency of liking stuff which is controversial or plain unpopular), but if someone doesn't bother to voice their criticism in a more mature way than an angry 12-year old, I'm not going to give a fuck about it. Good criticism that a) can have some genuine weight, b) has an actual chance to reach whoever you're addressing is if you're expressing it in a civilised way.

This extends to reviews and I still say that smart, well-worded negative reviews are 5000x more crushing than "FUCK THIS FUCKING SHIT" reviews. For a random example, Empyreal's FU review feels like a tank rolling all over the album and Tate's ego. On the other hand, 101% of UltraBoris' <50% reviews are better for nothing more than a very short and half-forced laugh. I've never seen a dumb berserk review that would be in any way convincing, and I've read quite a few reviews which expressed pretty much the same sentiments in a smart way which either gave me a massive laugh or made me seriously consider stuff.

You're right in that your example would be hamfisted and poor criticism, and personally I disregard that kind of slander if there isn't elaborate reasoning to back up such strong claims. The use of profanity is also slightly questionable in most cases. Still, there certainly are things that deserve it. However, what I'm really arguing against is the presumption that there is some kind of objective musical value in everything (which people advocating it generally define arbitrarily based on perceived effort put into creating something, such as production values or something equally inane). All pieces of critique, both positive and negative reviews, are subjective and mere expressions of reviewers' opinions. Therefore the argument is silly and doesn't mean anything. Someone bluntly declaring that In Flames is total auditory sewage is expressing his or her perception of the music, just as the defender is his/hers. That's all there is to it. Anyone is free to say that they think something really sucks. Unnecessarily insulting it is, of course, unmannerly, but crudeness does not in itself invalidate the criticism.

When it comes to more academically analysed pieces of music, such as compositions by Beethoven or Wagner, they are perceived to be masterpieces by many scholars for various reasons, including the immense amount of talent and ability that these works embellish (with these names, the degree of skill is such that almost no other music in any style or form can compare to, apart from other grandmasters of orchestral music composition). However, they aren't exempt of criticism either. Beethoven's music is criticised for lacking ingenious melodies, and Wagner is criticised of having written excessively long-winded compositions. Faults or no faults, these composers are regarded as grandmasters due to their works' adherence to certain values held by connoisseurs and scholars. Inherently, excluding the music's ability to please listeners, it's all worthless as a speck of dust in the wind.

I love Wagner, by the way. Beethoven is great for concert halls with great acoustics (and excellent orchestras/conductors to get the most out of it) due to being sonically impressive and brilliantly composed, but I never listen to his works on record.

Well, anything with the word "objective" behind it is generally of, let's call it, questionable existence as nobody can be objective in anything unless they're absolutely detached from the discussed matter, which is pretty much impossible in case of music. However, I do think that an "innocent until proved guilty" approach is better, and the fact that albums indeed do take plenty of time and effort to create, could be one of the better reasons to give it at least a bit of thought how do you voice your criticism. Besides purely ideological/moral reasons, I think a simpler end result will be what I mentioned above, e.g. I don't think any band will bother about anyone saying "you're shit", but if someone gives them some well-worded criticism they might just take it into account and wonder if they couldn't do some stuff better the next time. Crudeness maybe does not invalidate criticism but often makes it far weaker.

You could call me naive if you like, but I also think it would be just nicer for everyone if people thought more about how they voice their criticism. It's just not pleasant to deal with aggressive haters, regardless of how bad the music is in your opinion. I would much rather enjoy people having civilised discussions about Korn (which, erm, I'm not exactly a fan of) than fight with axes over any band I consider genuinely good. It's music for fuck's sake, it is a very serious matter for some people and I'm certainly one of them, but nothing bad will happen if you talk about it in a friendlier way. Quite the other way around.

As for the rest, I don't think classical music, and this also extends to "classic" albums of modern genres (metal included), should be treated in any super-special way here. (I'm not entirely sure if this is what you tried to say) In fact in many cases I find it genuinely unfair how some artists/bands/albums seem to have some automatic head start for being "classics", when nobody really knows if someone born 20 years later couldn't have created the same or even better but they were simply born later. I definitely agree their influence on music should be very much respected, but considering them objectively (which is what we talked about above) better is in my opinion plain disrespectful for modern artists.

What I find fun about this is most of these classic artists themselves were often fairly modest people and would probably hate the approach some "experts" have. And as for any sort of "experts" on music, or pretty much about any type of art (I think cinema is the worst case here), they're someone I can't take fully seriously and at least with a mountain of salt. These are very often cases of people who have some sort of strange delusions of knowing better than others, who in the meantime overlook the fact that a) they often overlook the basic reason of what art is for, b) they often have no fucking clue what they talk about.

"I have fond memories of this record. I recall my 15th birthday: I'd asked for my first ever record player (because CDs were too mainstream), and to accompany the small machine, my devoutly-Christian grandmother had bought me some vinyls. Unwrapping them, I smiled as my eyes met the logos and artworks of Megadeth; Mayhem; a Slayer EP. Then, tearing the wrapping paper off the final present, I looked at a pseudo-Nazi skull staring back at me with a spiky, aggressive logo above it. Opening the cover of the vinyl sleeve, I saw a message: a shoutout to all the "skinheads and elitists" that James Read was in contact with.

I took great pleasure in informing my grandmother that the band whose record she had bought me promoted right-wing ideologies and satanism."

Listening to this album is a transcendental experience. It makes you think about life, death, aspirations, and even the purpose in eating cereal or doing taxes. Any thought can come to your mind when this sterile album plays, anything except wanting to sit down to listen to it.

After five minutes I was dizzy. After 43 minutes I was just impressed at how boring and recycled it was. A second after it ended, my life came back to normality. The only good thing about listening to this album is that once it ends, you won’t remember a single note.

This album should be the handbook of How to Make a Riff Salad Album

Riff Salad ingredients:

01) Ugly as fuck cover with some creature from outer space, monster, or decomposed bodies on it. Terrible font and ugly colors too.

02) Bunch of guys with long sleeve tattoos, muscles, long hair (except one bald guy), and goatees that look like any random dudes that I see walking around the streets of L.A (actually this band looks pretty normal and okay in my book, so I’m not going to get into it too much).

03) Uninspired riffs that last for 2 seconds but that are very fast.

04) Sweep picking (speed of light kind of fast)

05) Melodic Middle-Eastern scales (fast or mid tempo)

06) Thin production sound

07) Triggered drums (ludicrous speed)

08) T-Rex vocals

09) Angry Golum vocals

10) Tough guy vocals from time to time

11) 7 string guitars or higher.

12) Crappy sounding but epic intro.

13) Instrumental song toward the end of the album.

14) 5 string bass or higher with a Fieldy-kind-of-sound.

15) Weird song titles and strange, epic lyrics about civilizations, creations, gods, and space with lots of clever words that nobody knows the meanings of. Lyrics can be about killing too but not in this album.

16) No songs

17) Some electronic elements

18) A video that is recorded at an abandoned warehouse

Mix all these ingredients and you’re likely to get any of these bands:

Abiotic, Rings of Saturn, Thy Art is Murder, Chelsea Grin, Boris the Blade, Make Then Suffer, Whitechapel, Signal the Firing Squad, Boris the Blade, Eat a Helicopter, A Thousand Years of Plagues…

This recipe is not 100% accurate of course; if the ingredients change slightly it can produce a different kind of band. Let’s say, if you remove all the technical ingredients and add lyrics about killing, you will likely get Oceano as a result.Expiration Date: Once you’ve taken the above ingredients and mixed them together, wait six months to find the album in the bargain bin at your local record store.

If this were a instructional music DVD, I would give it a 10, as these guys really can shred, blast, growl, sweat and fingerpick for days and nights, but as an album, this really lacks innovation, songs, emotion and creativity. I always think that bands that are proficient with their instruments should always be able to create great songs. Well, this is not the case till proven wrong, and believe me, I want this band to be good one day because I don’t want to waste my time again listening to something that has been done a zillion times before but better.

Wikipedia says that “Eugenics is the applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population”; I’m sure the members of this band have been part of the Eugenics program for a while now because they are genetically metal music beasts.

I don’t really want to talk only about the musicianship in this album, but to me in some metal genres, like Brutal Tech Metal, the musicianship is as important as the songwriting, and what we have here is some of the best Pornography Metal, an album that most of the time is successful because of the musicianship and the other half of the time because it has great ideas and tight songwriting....

"this is totally ungay""I dont want to sound retarded but I can imagine a lot of chicks liking this."

This was more than half of a review "The organic and focused aesthetic conjures nightmarish images, walking through narrowly parted trees, which twist and grow before my very eyes - the branches clutching and winding around and it's not until the eyes adjust that the truly grotesque nature of this nightmare is revealed. These trees have flesh. The branches are arms with hands and long fingers holding not leaves but clutching teeth and hair - silently screaming faces are adrift in the body of the trunk, with eyes rolling back violently to curse the infinity above for the infinity of torment which awaits them, swaying hypnotically in some tortured waltz of disfigurement – mocking of the idea that nature is beauty and opposing all serenity."

This was more than half of a review "The organic and focused aesthetic conjures nightmarish images, walking through narrowly parted trees, which twist and grow before my very eyes - the branches clutching and winding around and it's not until the eyes adjust that the truly grotesque nature of this nightmare is revealed. These trees have flesh. The branches are arms with hands and long fingers holding not leaves but clutching teeth and hair - silently screaming faces are adrift in the body of the trunk, with eyes rolling back violently to curse the infinity above for the infinity of torment which awaits them, swaying hypnotically in some tortured waltz of disfigurement – mocking of the idea that nature is beauty and opposing all serenity."

Oh man these reviews that are supposed to describe the music but I can't tell if this guy's even talking about music

"Listening to this album is a transcendental experience. It makes you think about life, death, aspirations, and even the purpose in eating cereal or doing taxes. Any thought can come to your mind when this sterile album plays, anything except wanting to sit down to listen to it."

To be completely honest, this line made me laugh, and it's a nice way of saying that an album is fucking boring.

_________________

Nochielo wrote:

Crick wrote:

Years from now, no one will remember Gandhi. They will speak only of Fenriz.